All over Wrigleyville vendors are selling T-shirts that read “Chicago Cubs,” “Wrigley Field,” “2003 Central Division Champions,” and “Sox Suck.” But none of them is getting as much for a shirt as Blue Marlin, a San Francisco clothing manufacturer that’s honoring one of Chicago’s best-known neighborhoods with a T-shirt that says “Wrigglyville.” They’re selling it for $27 at department stores all over the country.
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“I wouldn’t sell it,” said Rodriguez, whose “Wrigley Field” shirts go for $15 apiece. “That’s a misprint. You’d have customers complaining. How much is it? Twenty-seven dollars plus tax? Damn, I need to raise the price.”
“If we sold that, every drunk would be in here saying, ‘That’s spelled wrong,’” said manager Tim Boucher when he saw the Wrigglyville shirt.
Mark Shale, a tony clothing store with three locations in the Chicago area, buys a lot of shirts from Blue Marlin. But they were leery of “Wrigglyville.”
“It looks like they’re just trying to catch somebody by surprise, a tourist, an out-of-towner,” said Mark Wegren, who was waiting outside the Wrigley Field visitors’ entrance with a baseball scrapbook, hoping to catch some Cardinals for autographs. “I don’t think a local would buy it. It would look like you just got it off the street.”
